Fragments
by verisimilitude
Summary: Heís out of school, defeated Voldemort, and is the Saviour of a world in which his name is on everyoneís lips. However, Harry is holding a secret that would have been kept forever until a chance meeting.
1. of chance

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Disclaimer: Illusions caused by over-taxating schoolwork must not be blamed on exhausted student. Blame it on the monkey.

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Author's Note: The first part of this chapter was found while I was cleaning out my computer files. Joy upon joy that I found this gem. I desperately need a beta, will anyone help?

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Rating: R; **Title:** On the Shoulders of a God [OSG]; **Pairing:** HP/DM

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Summary: He's out of school, defeated Voldemort, and is the Saviour of a world in which his name is on everyone's lips. However, Harry is holding a secret that would have been kept forever until a chance meeting.

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Chapter One

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of chance

There was a path in the park nearby that Harry walked down every day. At least, he _wished _he could walk down it every day. No one usually walked down it because everyone had better things to do than waste time in a park. After all, weren't they just there to look pretty? And, of course, to keep those pesky environmentalists away.

Harry found solace in the fact that the only people he met were nice ones who didn't seem like strangers to him. Maybe because, like him, they too wished only to be alone in a place that seemed strangely from another time.

This day Dudley had gone to the movies with his friend, Piers Polkiss, and also a few new ones they had made since attending Smeltings. What they had in common with Dudley was Harry's best guess and he didn't want to know. His Aunt and Uncle had gone to some party for his Uncles' work. His Aunt for the gossip and his Uncle to kiss arse, he had thought. Either place he had obviously not been invited, even flat-out told he couldn't come. Harry didn't mind; he had just avoided some means of torture that day and felt relieved.

They had, however, left a crude list of extra chores he was to do. He had expected that. So, dutifully, he had, however questionably, [they wouldn't notice a speck of dust and a few crumbs around, would they?] done all on the list. He had then found he had plenty of extra time on his hands.

There was no doubt as to where he would go. Harry grabbed his newest clothes and haphazardly pulled them on, tripping over one of his shoes while tying it. Grabbing his shabby sketchbook, he left the confining house without a second glance, even if some guilt over the messily done chores resided in his mind. Harry quickly excused the guilt away.

As he reached the park Harry breathed in the spring air; its' fresh smell of newness. Smiling, he looked around and bent down to uncover the green sprout of a flower on the ground. Walking a little farther down a worn dirt path he encountered a bench with splintering wood and a smooth seat. He brushed off a few twigs and tree seeds and sat down. Sighing, he slouched on the bench, enjoying the crisp breeze and the sounds surrounding him.

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I wonder what I'll draw today, He thought.

Curious, he cleared his mind and waited for the first thing that appeared in his thoughts.

The World. _On a man's shoulders?_ Harry wondered.

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Odd. Harry hadn't had been thinking about Greek Myths lately, but the idea intrigued him. What would it be like to have to carry the world on your shoulders for eternity? Harry didn't like that, but he supposed someone had to do it. After all, Atlas wasn't human. He was a God.

He pulled out his sketchbook and pencil and flipped to a blank page. It was pristine white and Harry regretted having to make it impure. He always had a deep guilt every time he was about to start on a new drawing. Guilt that he was ruining something that was beautiful. Sadly, Harry sketched a rough circle, and the guilt went away. Now the paper would be home to something that was in its rights almost as equally beautiful.

He hadn't heard the girl come up. In fact, he hadn't noticed her until she spoke.

"It's wonderful," A soft voice from his left shoulder penetrated his trance.

Harry looked down at the sketchpad in his lap, blinking a few times. He tilted his head and looked at it with a trained eye.

"It needs more shading. And his shoulder is giving me problems. Not the best I've done," He grudgingly admitted, "but not the worst." He looked at the girl beside him and smiled faintly.

She pushed some of her white-blond hair behind her ear and grinned. "Atlas," She chuckled. "You don't look like someone who would be into Greek Mythology."

He shrugged. "Yes, well, you can't judge someone by their looks."

Nodding, she held out her hand, "I'm Angela Laufeyson."

Harry paused for a moment. Should he tell this girl his real name? After all, most Muggles knew his name. Ever since he had defeated Voldemort and the subsequent revealing of the Wizarding World, he thought bitterly. This girl seemed intelligent. She might know. It was better if he used his alternative name, the one he was going to change to once he was eighteen.

"James Evans," he replied, taking her hand in his. It seemed small in comparison and Harry realized how fragile the girl was.

Angela beamed. "Do you mind if I sit down next to you, James?" She shyly asked.

Harry shook his head and gestured to the empty spot next to him on the old wooden bench.

"Thanks," she smiled at him again and sat down slowly, brushing off her gray woolen skirt for nonexistent wrinkles. Harry studied this girl beside him for a few moments. Her thin corn-silk hair hung dull and almost lifeless down to the middle of her back. Her lips were pale and small, her eyes glittering with wan gray, and a light dusting of freckles adorned her nose and cheeks. She was obviously suffering, but from what Harry couldn't tell. However, she was beautiful in a fragile, womanly sort of way and he couldn't help thinking that she reminded him of someone, someone who was also very beautiful, someone graceful…

Harry couldn't think for the life of him who Angela reminded him of but he knew it would nag at his mind for weeks.

With a sigh of resignation he turned back to his drawing, the imperfections now glaring at him. Why couldn't he ever draw anything right? In irritation he flipped the page and in the process ripped his drawing.

"Shit!" he cursed, running his left hand through his hair in frustration. He glanced at Angela and saw her looking at him in a confused way.

She spoke, her voice soft, "What did you get angry? You draw wonderful." Her eyebrows knitted together.

Harry sighed and set his sketchbook down with a plop. He hadn't told someone anything remotely soul-baring in a long time. In fact, he hadn't talked much about anything since Sirius, his Godfather, had died, and that was two and a half years ago. He didn't know why he felt like telling this girl, this basic stranger, everything right now, but he did. He desperately needed someone to tell what was burdening him now, and something about this girl almost forced him to. Really, there was nothing to lose, he mused. Angela wouldn't be judgmental, she didn't know him, and she could offer help in a way that no one else could. He made up his mind.

"It's not just my drawing," he began.

She raised one of her slender eyebrows in an expression that made Harry's heart twinge. Who?

"No," he stopped; lost in the facial emotions she was displaying. They were so familiar! He made himself go on. "No, it's not just my drawing. I'm frustrated about everything. The – the people that I grew up with expect me to be this perfect person, just set on earth for one specific reason: to help them. And, well, they just don't understand that I have interests in other things. Like when I'm drawing, I want someone to appreciate it, but whenever I try to show it to them all they say is 'Oh, that's nice,' and then ask me questions on how I'm faring with saving the world." He paused, wondering how to go on or if he even should. Was she bored? Did she even want to hear his tirade? "Am I boring you?"

She shook her head, white wisps floating around her ears. "No," she admitted. I find people's lives fascinating. Have you ever tried telling your friends how you feel – that they aren't letting you be yourself around them?" She tilted her head in yet again a familiar gesture, but Harry gave up on trying to guess who she was so alike.

"No," he said grudgingly. No, he hadn't thought to tell them because he knew they would probably just brush it off as another of 'Harry Moods' and decide to stay away until it supposedly wore off. "There was someone who knew – once – everything about me, but he's --" Harry choked a little. The wound was still fresh. "I'm not allowed to see him anymore."

Angela smiled ruefully. "I had someone like that once. He was my cousin." She sighed loudly and picked at the hem of her skirt. "He was perfection in one human being. When we were little we used to play at his house, out in the gardens. He taught me how to ride horses, and" She paused and looked at Harry calculatingly. "You've…heard of the 'Wizarding World', right? I mean, the whole wow! There's magic in the world a whole place we never knew about? The Dark Lord-Harry Potter thing?" Angela squinted at him and chewed her bottom lip nervously, as if debating to tell him something.

Harry laughed inside at the whole irony of it because he was pretty sure that the girl he was talking to now was a Witch. Good thing he didn't tell her about his being Harry Potter. He cleared his throat. "Yeah, I know about it."

Angela looked flustered and undecided. Harry really hadn't given her any knowledge as to whether or not he was against it hated it, envied it, or was of it. She seemed to make up her mind after a few seconds. "Well, I'm a Witch." And she paused as if waiting for a climax that never came.

"Huh," Harry answered, smirking inside. He was only playing with her and was sure she would laughingly share his joke later on.

"Um, uh, where was I?" She twisted her hands in nervousness.

Harry turned and put his chin in his hand and looked at her straight on. "Where your cousin taught you when you were younger."

She smiled weakly at him. "Oh, yes. My cousin taught me how to ride a broomstick and defend myself with hexes against my other older cousin, Sirius."

Harry stood up quickly, shock filling his face. _Sirius?_ "Sirius?" He voiced out loud. Oh, no! If Sirius had been her cousin, then her other cousin had been…Draco Malfoy. She was a Malfoy! All the mannerisms and her looks clicked in his head as he saw how much she looked like his Draco. _No, not my Draco any longer._ Harry's face had drained of colour.

Angela stood up also, confusion and bewilderment on her face. "What? Did you know Sirius?" She frowned. "He died a couple of years ago, but I hadn't seen him since I was a little girl."

Harry swallowed. "Yes, I knew him. I saw him die."

"No!" Angela gasped. "You're a Wizard?"

Harry stuck his pencil and eraser stiffly into his jean pocket and grabbed his sketchbook from the park bench. "And I thought Muggle parks were safe from Malfoys and their kin." He turned around and briskly walked away. He heard the girl calling for him to come back but he ignored her and walked even faster. He felt a brief twinge of guilt that he should blame a probably innocent girl of previous wrongdoings to him by her family, but it went away. That is, until he glanced behind him and saw her limping away in the opposite direction. He saw her shoulders shaking in sobs, but it was too late to go back to apologize. Plus, she reminded him so much of Draco that it hurt to look at her.

And Draco was gone from his life forever.


	2. behind

**Disclaimer: **Illusions caused by over-taxating schoolwork must not be blamed on exhausted student. Blame it on the monkey.

**Author's Note:** Second part because I love this story, and it won't go away.

**Rating:** R; **Title:** On the Shoulders of a God OSG; **Pairing:** HP/DM

**Summary:** He's out of school, defeated Voldemort, and is the Saviour of a world in which his name is on everyone's lips. However, Harry is holding a secret that would have been kept forever until a chance meeting.

**Chapter Two**

_behind_

Almost one year ago, Harry Potter defeated Voldemort. It wasn't spectacular, it wasn't a big battle, but something happened the very instant the boy named Harry mustered up enough hate to cast the Killing Curse on the murderer of his parents and countless others.

Harry Potter died.

Harold James Potter had been the son of a muggle-born witch named Lily Evans and a pureblood wizard, James Potter. He had been born for a purpose: to kill. However, he was also born with another purpose, and that was to die.

When he was but one year old, he killed.

When he was 17, he had to die.

It wasn't something he had a choice in, or a path he picked, it was just fate and fate, well, fate could be a bitch.

So, Harry Potter died the moment he felt the darkness of hate consume him. And he knew he would die, and he knew he would soon be dead.

And that's what puzzled him when he woke up mere moments later to screaming, shouts and exclamations of horror, joy, and distress. He looked around him and saw Muggles staring at the shriveled husk of the Dark Lord, and at him.

Harry now didn't know what to think, as he saw some muggles on cell phones calling others. He sort of half sat half laid there, black eating at the corner of his vision. He dimly wondered what had happened and why Muggles could see him and what the hell they were thinking when they saw him lying there with a wand and robes on.

During his haze, he felt himself being lifted up and talked to reassuringly. That he would be ok, there was nothing even physically wrong with him.

Yet, he felt something. It was there, at the very outer rim of his mind. Hate. And, perhaps he felt a loss too, because with true hate, true black dark hate, enough to kill, he had lost his innocence.

Days later, in St. Mungo's, he learned from Hermione that Dumbledore was dead, everyone's magic was going haywire, and the muggles now knew everything. In that order.

It seemed when he reached out to kill Voldemort, he had killed the magical threads of the Wizarding World also. Or, at least, burned them severely.

Hermione said that the Muggles were making him the pedestal of wizards, and that books were being written about him, people being interviewed, shows, magazines, everything.

So Harry sighed and wondered how he was going to live with this fame, a huge, torturing fame that would never leave him alone.

And he wondered, sometimes, what had happened to Draco.

During these musings, people would come in and try to talk to him, but he didn't want to talk. And he really didn't feel as if he knew any of these people, people he had joked with once, gone to school with.

Gradually, he realized that Harry Potter had died.

When he got released, he found out that because he was still 17, he had to go back to the Dursley's. He really didn't care, and when he got back, mostly they just ignored him.

He found most of his days occupied with dreams, and himself wasting away.

He was James Evans now, he told others. They nodded and agreed with him, because why upset him? It was just a name.

One day, he went out and bought a sketchbook.

It was like a miracle for him. He drew, and drew, and he couldn't stop drawing. Sometimes he drew Voldemort, other times, happy days at Hogwarts. Sometimes: death, blood, torture. But mostly he drew Draco.

Draco sleeping, Draco laughing, Draco walking, Draco crying, Draco yelling, Draco cursing, Draco naked, Draco climaxing, Draco…things Draco had only let Harry see.

And Draco as a Death Eater.

Hermione visited him, occasionally, and told him about how the Death Eaters were being put on trial one by one, and that soon Voldemort's right-hand man would be put up there, no matter that he was 17.

And all the unaccounted murders would be added to his long list of crimes, because Draco Malfoy had been a Death Eater, and the strongest and most cunning of them all. Voldemort's Heir.

Surely, he would be killed in the most excruciatingly way possible, in front of the whole world.

Hermione told him that he was already tortured daily.

Harry cried that night, sobbing into his pillow, remembering making love to Draco and Draco's soft smile.

Remembering the day Draco left him.

It hurt even more, after that day in the park where Draco's cousin talked to him. That night, he nearly passed out from sobbing.

And when he woke the next morning, he realized that if he was to ever get Draco out of his mind, he needed to see Draco one last time.

So, he headed to the park.


End file.
